Before I discuss Open Graph I must point out that I’ve been on a facebook roller coaster the past 48 hours. I was super excited two days ago to have my facebook fan page completed facebook.com/webdesignservices making it look like an actual web page/landing page, then I decided to pay for advertising when things went bad. I do not recommend advertising on facebook.com as I was given fraudulent clicks after clicks from most likely an automated bot, I even complained to facebook who told me to send over a log of my stats so they could compare, that’s when I told them the heck with it and canceled my advertising after using it for only 24 hours. After looking things over with my best friend Google it appears I’m not the only one experiencing this issue, hopefully it gets fixed fast because when you’re paying $1.50 per click it adds up pretty darn fast.

Anyways, about Open Graph. Even though I don’t have a personal facebook account I like the idea of the “Like” button being on any web page for users to click and share instantly. The example given where a user “Likes” a movie off of IMDB and it automatically adds it to their facebook profile is pretty awesome and scary at the same time, I predict some facebook users to begin deleting their accounts once they realize their privacy is slowly shrinking.

I also like the comments idea but I’m still undecided if I want to use it on my website or stick with wordpress comments, the spamming would most likely disappear. I’ll most likely may play around with it and see which works best.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about you can check out the new features facebook features here.

I’ve launched BigCommerce Web Templates (bigcommercewebtemplates.com) as a landing page to attract more BigCommerce customers. I’ll be launching a BigCommerce store in the near feature to download pre-made templates at a low price ($100-200.00) most likely by the end of spring. But right now as mentioned in a previous blog post I’m looking to build my portfolio up right now with custom BigCommerce templates.

In other updates, I’ll be organizing the portfolio by the end of the night and getting our facebook fan page looking nice tomorrow.

Thanks and have a good weekend!

I’ll be launching some landing pages over the next 2 weeks and will show them off in the portfolio as well, these should bring in a decent amount of traffic as they focus on the services I offer.

I’m also getting involved in SEO a little bit more than usual, I’ve been doing some tweaking to my keywords (which I won’t mention on here) but I’ve moved up to the top 5 and some I’m ranked #1 so we’ll see how that goes. Once I get the SEO down I’ll be able to offer that as another service without charging an arm and leg like others do.

I’ll have the facebook fan page updated this weekend looking nice and pretty.

I finally made the upgrade from Adobe Photoshop 7.0 to CS4 this past week. For those of you who are familiar with Photoshop you understand my excitement, I’ve been using 7.0 for the past 7-8 years when it came out and yes every website in my portfolio was designed using 7.0. I’m excited because this means I should be able to improve my techniques and the quality of my web designs. I was able to find the software for $400.00 instead the retail price of $700.00 which is also pretty awesome.

On another note – I’ll begin posting online videos soon for simple tasks regarding wordpress and bigcommerce templates to help the average user.

The iPad will be launching in 2 days and I’m still stuck on whether I actually need one or not. Please keep in mind I don’t even own a cell phone so I just don’t know if this latest gadget serves a purpose in my life. Now, would I rather carry around an iPad to places I visit than a laptop? Yes. However I don’t have a cell phone or smartphone because I don’t like to be available 24/7 with calls, emails, or texting – and I don’t really need to know what Chad Ochocinco posted on his twitter feed. I don’t want the iPad for play because that kind of stuff is not appealing to me anymore, I don’t have a personal facebook and watching movies on that small of a screen doesn’t sound fun at all.

I admit it would be pretty cool to take the iPad to meetings and load my portfolio right up or show off the first draft to the client, however you can’t multitask and it doesn’t support flash. And is it really worth $500? Eh, maybe. I do love the idea of sitting up in my bed reading books on it or browsing the web to research various topics that interest me rather than sitting at a computer desk, but that doesn’t sell me on buying one. I own a few apple products and I’ve been very happy with them, however each play a role with my business and unfortunately the iPad just doesn’t make sense right now. I’ll save my $500 and invest in something else more beneficiary.